Lambda the Ultimate

Bash Reference Manual
started 1/5/2001; 11:07:30 AM - last post 1/12/2001; 4:27:52 AM

Chris Rathman - Bash Reference Manual

1/5/2001; 11:07:30 AM (reads: 1765, responses: 3)

Bash Reference Manual

I've done a bit of bash programming in the past but I've never really sat down and tried to study the programming language/environment. Recently finished reading Learning the bash Shell and thought I'd pass on the relevant link for the reference manual, as well as a bash reference card.

Although bash is quite powerful, I can't say that I particularly like it as a programming language. Too many ad hoc additions that represent disconnected ideas. Perhaps not as complex as CL/400 with it's multitude of commands, but I suppose at least it's not as brain dead as programming for MS-DOS,

From a design standpoint, I still think that Rexx stands as the best language for shell programming.
Posted to "" by Chris Rathman on 1/5/01; 11:09:23 AM

Ehud Lamm - Re: Bash Reference Manual

1/11/2001; 12:22:13 PM (reads: 1766, responses: 0)

I always thought of Rexx as in the string processing category, where it has strong competition with langugaes like SNOBOL4, Icon , Perl etc.

Compared to these the Rexx parse command is very weak. Rexx doesn't even have regular expressions!

(But Rexx is readable, as opposed to those cryptic REs in Perl...)

Chris Rathman - Re: Bash Reference Manual

1/11/2001; 1:49:14 PM (reads: 1766, responses: 0)

Well, compared to SNOBOL4, Icon, and Perl, the string processing capabilities of Rexx are pretty restricted. Even bash has better string handling with it's built in power of regular expressions.

I guess my point is not that Rexx is a great programming language. But as a batch processing language along the lines of the shell languages, it is easier to read and maintain because the design is much more consistent.

The difference between batch processing languages (bash, dos, rexx, etc...), scripting languages (awk, perl, python, etc...) and general purpose languages (C, Ada, Java, etc...) is a gray one. Most programmers have a tendency to stretch a language either up (in the case of the batch languages) or down (in the case of scripting and general purpose languages).

To me, bash and rexx (and even awk) are intended for quick and dirty shell scripts. Trying to create a large program from them is probably using the wrong tool for the job at hand. The same goes for trying to use perl for everything when it comes to simple system administration.

Ehud Lamm - Re: Bash Reference Manual

1/12/2001; 4:27:52 AM (reads: 1754, responses: 0)

One nice feature of Rexx is the idead of environments. This is esp. useful for emedding. Bascially it allows Rexx to pass commands it doesn't understand to an environment handler. You can set a dfeault env., or specify the env. you want for a given command. For example you can write:

address TSO "HELP"

to send the help command to the TSO handler (TSO is a 'shell' on IBM mainframes).

Creating env. of your own is really cool...